'The Plum' Zvjezdan Misimovic has been through an awful lot for both club and
country, but at last he can show off his skills in an international
tournament

In this modern football of ‘run, tackle, run, pass, score’ sometimes we lose sight of the real football values. Yes, it’s the result that matters, but we seem to forget the fun that this game is supposed to give us in the way. Luckily there are a few romantics, true characters still around, and one of them plays for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Zvjezdan Misimovic, aka Miske, is probably the most loveable player in our team. And you don’t have to look far to find reasons - he has fun on the pitch.

But don’t get this wrong, he’s much more than a showman. His amazing skills are incorporated into the team’s game. Adding to all that, he has a feisty nature that from time to time gets him into trouble. A real character - and you just have to love that.

Born in Munich, he made his name in Germany even before he conquered Bundesliga with Edin Dzeko and Wolfsburg in 2009. He had his personal army of fans, those who value skilful players constantly involved in a game. How much was he involved? Well, let's just remember that we are still talking Bundesliga's all-time top assist man (20 in that championship-winning season).

Yes, It's been some time since his heyday in Germany, but he's still got it, that and some spare kilos, some would add. He is now 31, but he actually always looked more or less the same.

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Chubby looks were always there - during his time spent at Bayern Munich he was nicknamed ‘Zwetschge’ (German for ‘the plum’), but hey, nobody’s perfect. That’s the part of his charm, especially noticeable in the midst of modern-era lookalike footballers.

In those Meisterschaft-winning days with Wolfsburg he had already been a national team player for some time. He made his Bosnia debut in 2004, as a Bochum midfielder, and now, 1- years later, he is the most capped Bosnian player with 80 appearances and second all-time top scorer.

Five different coaches led Bosnia during his time with the team, he played during five different qualifying campaigns with two near misses (both play-offs with Portugal), but he finally made it.

He had a couple rough moments on the way. Romanian coach Gheorghe Hagi didn’t like his attitude and labelled him "not focused enough", and that made him leave Galatasaray and move to Dinamo Moscow. Chewing gum during training was apparently the last straw.

And in Moscow, Dinamo fans fired paintballs at him and his colleagues, punishing them for poor results. Playing in Russia, he also escaped a ban from the Russian Football Union for kicking the ball at Spartak Moscow fans who pelted him with snowballs.

He came to blows with coach Safet Susic too. Much to his disgust he was made to sit out the first half of the Belarus home game in 2011, but came in and scored a winner. Lip readers easily understood his message heading for the bench - so apparent it was, he had to explain himself on the national TV.

"The insult wasn’t intended for Susic," he said afterwards, but also added: "It seems I didn’t completely forget how to play football."

The final twist in his relationship with Susic came about when Miske made his transfer to China’s Guizhou Renhe in 2013. Susic wasn’t too happy, but most of us were surprised when Zvjezdan wasn’t called up for the Slovenia friendly. Order was restored in those all important qualifying games and he was back in his starting role.

Yes, he's been through a lot, but it was all worth it - to an extent that now he can summarise it all with a "playing at a World Cup is every footballer’s dream" remark and say that with a big smile on his face.